Quote:
Originally Posted by hotroddaddy
I agree and I need to do the same. I turned 35 this past week and I need to get some things checked out too.
I haven't thought about this in a while; but, the relevance of this particular posting reminded me of a guy that I would consider a friend of mine even though we didn't really run with the "same crowd" or really "pal around" with each other.
My highschool economics teacher who was actually also one of my football coaches, (Mark) was a great guy. Oddly enough, he actually also became a fairly good friend to me over the years. He of course was older than I was by what seemed like quite a bit at the time; but he was one of the coolest teachers you could ever have. In fact, he and his wife (Holly) took my best friend from highschool (Ian) and I out to dinner as a graduation gift shortly after we graduated.
He had always seemed to appreciate our particular sense of humor and seemed to let us get away with bit more than some of our classmates. In fact, our Senior year, Ian and I had him arrested by one of the local Sherriff's department officers on a "trumped up" charge during class one day as a practical joke. :LOL: He got a pretty big kick out of the whole thing. :)
So anyway, not too long after I got stationed at McChord (1992), I found out that he and Holly had both taken teaching jobs down in Olympia and moved out here to Washington. So, I got around to tracking down a number for them and gave him a call.
We visited for a few minutes on the phone and I invited he and Holly to join my girlfriend and I for dinner. In fact, I told him I owed him one anyway and I would even pay. He told me that he'd love too; but, wouldn't be able to make it because he was scheduled for a "minor procedure" at the local hospital. He went on to tell me that he had been having some problems going to the bathroom for a while now, and that he was now starting to have problems digesting food and so he was going in to get it taken care of.
So, anyway, I ended up going to visit him in the hospital the day after his "procedure" and we had a great visit. He told me that the doctors had removed a small part of his intestine and that they seemed to think that "this might do the trick" but that there were a few more tests they were going to run before he was to check out the following day.
Anyway, we visited for probably 2 1/2 to 3 hours, laughing and joking about the arrest warrent he'd been served as well as a few other things that had happend. He told me stories of his new job and leaving the old one. He asked me about my job and gave me updates on all the kids I had gone to school with etc. Finally, we agreed to get together sometime within the next month or two for dinner and a few drinks, and I left to let him get some rest.
About 3 weeks after this, I was sent on a Temporary Duty Assignment (TDY) for a short period of time (2 weeks) to Pope AFB in NC. Right after this TDY, I had scheduled some leave to go on a fishing trip with my buddy Ian, who also happened to be in the AF at the time, stationed in Great Falls MT. So, when I got back into town, one of the very first things I did was called Ian to verify that the trip was still on, and he broke the news to me, Mark was dead. Cancer was the culprit.
You could have knocked me over with a feather, I was so stunned. In fact, at first I argued with him and told him I'd just seen Mark and Holly about a month and a half before this and there was no way that could be right. He then read me the obituary that he had copied down over the phone while talking to his parents, and it finally started to sink in. At some point after that, my roomate at the time, who had un-intentionally, overheard one end of the conversation, looked up at me and told me that I had gotten a phone call from "a Holly" while I was gone, and that she had wanted me to give them a call as soon as I could. I can still remember the chill that ran down my spine when he told me that.
So, Ian and I canceled our fishing trip and made plans instead to attend the funeral. I didn't even unpack my bag, I just loaded it up in my truck, went into my duty section, signed and turned in my leave paperwork and drove to Idaho for the funeral. :(
It was there that Holly told me that they were informed of the diagnosis the morning after I left his hospital room. The cancer had evidently started in his colon and had already spread pretty much throughout his entire body and was eating him alive by the time he went in. He had simply put it off too long. :( I guess they also told them that there wasn't really anything that they could do at that point to stop it, all they could do was make him comfortable because it had spread so far. So, they made a decision, and checked him out of the hospital and they went back to SE Idaho so that they could be around family, and he died while I was in NC.
He was only 34.
I know that they say that you don't have to have "the tests" until your over 40; but, if you suspect that something isn't working right, don't wait for the checks at 40 to find out why.
Dutch
